Software Freedom Day
For a long time, the local Linux User Group, SFLUG (SydFyns Linux User Group) have been arranging the celebration of the annual Software Freedom Day here in Svendborg, Southern Funen. I have been writing some of the PR material, and helped arranging the event, in collaboration with Nis Wilson Nissen and Daniel “Cyberdoc” Frederiksen, our chairman. Alsp, let me endorse Daniel for being such a splendid chairman. He really knows how to combine cozy, social meetings with tchnical workshops, free software lectures and more. SFLUG is truly a great LUG, and i feel privileged in that i am a member of this LUG.
The event took place yesterday, starting at 9 ‘o clock AM. We had rented a large pavillion of 81 square metres, and we had access to both wired and wireless networks, electricity, coffee, cola and so on.
We had done made flyers and a quiz, which we passed on to pedestrians and people visiting the town market. They’d read the flyer, which explained the principles of open source end free software, and then, if they had read the flyer properly, they had learned a lot about free software, and would be able to answer the quiz correctly. Many did, some didn’t, of course.
It was possible to win a linux based linksys router, a cordless logitech desktop, a webcam, a gadget called IP-Talky (explanation follows) and some other things. It was a truly great day, and we had a great time all the day through. A lot of the people that i know showed up, including, of course, a lot of the SFLUG members, including Anders Karlsen, Nis Wilson Nissen, Daniel Frederiksen, Lars Peter Larsen (who programs in Comal80 and is damn good at it) and a lot of other SFLUG members.
Quite a lot of other people – who were not SFLUG members – participated in the event, including my two good friends Tobias Berg Therkelsen and Morten Juhl Johansen (mjjohansen). Yep, we had a great time. I guess that this is on of the best events i have ever attended.
Well, about 8:30 PM (thats 20:30 
), just after finishing the Software Freedom Day event, Daniel, Morten and i went for some dinner in Svendborg, and we chose to eat at Restaurant Arthur, a nice italian restaurant in Svendborg. We got a long talk on films, Free Software, programming and lots of other things. Again, we had a great time.
Today, i’ve been writing some python, and had a lot of trouble getting a PyQT application working. Nothing extraordinary there.
Morten posted this on his web page, just today (i translated it into english as well as i could):
“I strongly discourage Linux users from using the Nettips Forum (forum.nettips.dk). The people on nettips prematurely judges all linux uses as being manic Linux advocates, and Linux users are seen as people who can be flamed without any fear of the nettips admins intervening.
It is a place of such careless trolling and baiting, with the one goal, it seems, of making free software advocates look bad, that pne should better stay away from it. Don’t go there.”
I totally agree with what Morten says here. It seems that many Nettips users blindly provoke Linux users to such an extent that one simply has to tell them how wrong they are, which mostly end up with a “Look what i said, Linux users are sooo aggressive” kind of comment from one of the nettips users. Frustrating.
Allow me to link to Mortens splendid (Danish) blog.
Morten was also the winner of the IP-Talky in our free software quiz. What a gadget, huh?
The kindest regards Bjerrk.
Hi! I’ve been searching the web for a guide on how to use IP-talky in linux, but to no good. Now I believe that you wouldn’t use it as a price in the quiz game if it doesn’t work, so I’d better ask you – where would I go for guides or any other help on setting the keyboard up in linux?
Thanks in advance!
Actually, i don’t know.
MJJ (the guy who won the IP Talky) isn’t much of a gadget freak, i guess, but he told me that it worked fine enough using the USB Gadgets-driver, but i don’t even know if he’s tried the “phone” part, but i would expect it to work just like a regular sound card, so enabling the USB Gadgets driver, and finding out what kind of sound card “chipset” the IP Talky uses, and then enabling that one, might help.
Now, i don’t know how “experienced” you are with Linux, and i guess that my reply is useful only if you know how to configure your kernel.
Please post your experiences here, and feel free to ask for further assistance – i will try my best, but there’s no guarrantee that i know how to solve you problem.
Kind Regards Bjerrk
Thanks, I’ll try it some more next week. I just feel it would be nice to hear a success story from someone, so I know I don’t try in vain. Sadly, I haven’t found any.
Yes, I realize it will probably involve at least loading some modules, and maybe some changes in modules.conf. I’ve got some experiences on that.
The keyboard works without problems (I haven’t tried to assign all “multimedia buttons” yet, but some of them were already configured for me by Gnome), it’s the phone part that is tricky. I don’t have any experiences on setting up usb audio, so it will be a learning process for me.
I’ll come back to you and report my progress after the weekend!
Regards, Par